The DEAD LOVE ghoul and zombie show makes an appearance at Dark Carnival Bookstore on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley at the happy and witching hour (5:30pm) on Friday, September 24th. DEAD LOVE author, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, has compared being at Dark Carnival to sitting inside a truffle-lined coffin in an outer space full of book-shaped stars. Well, we of the supernatural set think it’s like throwing yourself into a closet packed with weirdness, and we know some of you would love to do that. Bookseller and owner Jack Rems describes it over the phone as a fantasy and science fiction bookstore, but it is so much more than that, and Rems knows it. “I like the term imaginative fiction better than science fiction or fantasy,” says Rems. “It’s more inclusive and a higher tone. It was what I read, and then I ended up with this job. Kind of weird how any of us end up doing what we do …”

We’re just glad there is a Dark Carnival somewhere in the known universe and that we are going there. We hope a few of our dear and deadly feel the same way and decide to join us in the illustrious decades-old closet of fine speculative fiction for red wine, brain food, and a little DEAD LOVE. They have the limited hardcover edition of the novel with the manga supplement, of course.

Let me leave you with some very wise words from Jack:

“I believe fiction is a good thing. I’m not sure exactly why, but I believe that there are certain things that are true, that truth is a quality that fiction can have. The best fiction has this quality. That’s the real reason it works. I’m thinking of a larger truth, a moral truth. The real world is frustrating because so many of the wrong things happen, and there’s often a total lack of plot and story. It could be called an escape into fiction, but part of the object of writing a book is to make sense out of life. If the book doesn’t make sense, no one wants it, it’ll never get published. It’s got to make more sense than life. I think the best moments in real life are when they resemble fiction.”